Podemos's crisis worsens amid complaints of "cheating" by two canceled critical candidates

Alvaro Carvajal Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-02:40

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The internal crisis that Podemos is going through is getting even muddier. To the collapse of the electoral results, being left with only four deputies in the Mixed Group and the cascade of resignations and abandonments in the last nine months - including candidates, regional coordinators and the Secretary of Organization -, we must now add one more element: the accusation of being "cheating" in the primaries that are being held these days to minimize the emergence of internal opposition against the national leadership.

This is the complaint being made by some of the non-governmental candidates who were immersed in the process. They were, conjugated in the past tense, because formally they are no longer. Since they have been erased as a team and all their members have been prevented from appearing on a joint list - thus squandering any minimal option to leave. The argument is that they had failed to comply with the requirement of having an equal list of women and men.

Although it is really doubtful whether this pretext fits into one of the affected cases, the most relevant thing is that the two critical candidates have been prevented from correcting this problem when they were warned about it. The two lists involved submitted separate letters during the correction period, however, both hit a wall and were denied any possibility of rectifying, leaving them out of the race and unleashing their most absolute indignation.

This has happened in the primaries for the official list of the European elections, where a group of critics competed against

Irene Montero

and her team. And it has also happened in the election of the new autonomous leadership of the Canary Islands, where

Noemí Santana

, one of the four national deputies of Podemos, aspires to revalidate her current mandate as regional coordinator.

The most controversial case is precisely the canary. Because of the doubts that the decision presents and, furthermore, because of the two non-governmental candidates affected, it was the one that put the Podemos apparatus in the greatest trouble.

This critical list was presented as composed of four men and three women. Seven people to make up part of the Citizen Council of the Canary Islands. It so happens that one of those women,

Mila Hormiga

, was also running to lead the party as regional coordinator, facing Noemí Santana in a vote parallel to this one.

Well, the Podemos committee in charge of these primaries knocked down the list. «We are contacting the Canarias Primero candidacy to inform you that it does not meet parity criteria; since there are 4 men and 3 women," said the email sent by "Subsanaciones Procesos 2024" on Friday, January 19 at 5:52 p.m., and which this newspaper has accessed. And he added the following justification: "You cannot count the same person twice." This crucial comment was made by Mila Hormiga, who was presenting herself both as a candidate for coordinator (which being an individual position there is no parity) and for citizen advisor, that is, as part of the broad management.

This practice of aspiring to these two positions is so common in Podemos that even Pablo Iglesias

himself

used it in the famous Vistalegre II in 2017. The Protocol of the candidacies for the autonomous citizen assemblies 23-24 reflects it on page 4: «If you want to present yourself to the Autonomous Citizen Council of your Community, you can do so individually, as an independent, or as part of a list linked to a candidate for the Autonomous Coordination. This candidacy is not incompatible with opting for the Autonomous Coordination.

But here it has been used as a pretext to annul the list, despite the fact that, as is clear, they are two different bodies and have separate votes. Mila Hormiga has found that her team has been invalidated - with its linked political, organizational or feminism documents - because it is considered that, for the purposes of parity, she does not count in the list of seven - despite being part - and that Therefore, there are four men and only two women without it.

"Tortuous interpretation"

Since his candidacy, the indignation against this "boycott" is total. "Here there is a distorted interpretation of the parity criterion," they denounce. "We consider that they are cheating because it is unlikely that the criteria will be changed halfway."

The consequence for these primaries is that the candidates on this list called Canarias Primero disappear as a team and remain in a mixed bag called "white list", where they appear "invisibilized" and without their documents. "There is no one who has never entered an autonomous body from the white list," they warn, due to the complex points system that penalizes going alone.

Their attempts to solve all this with Corrections have been met with their refusals or their silence. As he has done with the list criticizing the European women, Regeneration Europe, who wanted to include one more woman and was refused to do so. Those affected denounce that it is about preventing the internal response from becoming visible.